Sister Jessica Garfield California San Fernando Mission

Hey everybody!  This week was so weird. We just had transfers, and it has been a really weird adjustment to have pretty much every companionship in the mission as a hybrid between the city and the valley! My new companion is named Sister Jarvis. She's from Seattle, has been out for about 14 months, and she's an ASL missionary! She has spent most of her mission in the ASL branch, so it has been interesting to see how that has affected her mission. It's really funny; every once in a while she'll just sign while she talks and she won't even realize it. It has also made backing when driving really weird because she keeps trying to give me directions through sign language. ; ) We're figuring it out though. Also, this week we introduced ourselves to this one guy who said he wouldn't remember our names, so I just went, "It's easy. I'm Sister Garfield, like the cat, and she's Sister Jarvis, like in Iron Man." So we have a comic book charact...

Hey my awesome family that I love! So. Transfers: I am staying in West Hills, but my companion and I will also be picking up the YSA ward over here, which actually covers almost this entire valley. It's a freaking huge area. ; ) I'm not a huge fan of YSA, but I think it should actually be pretty good. This YSA ward has had a lot of baptisms lately, so the ward is full of all these cool recent converts that love sharing the gospel. One of them was even found through the Book of Mormon experiment. My new companion is going to be Sister Jarvis. We will both be STLs, but Sister Jarvis hasn't been an STL before, so I'll get to help her learn the ropes. The only thing I know about her is that she is apparently also an ASL missionary, which will be good for our ward since there are a few deaf members. I'll hopefully be able to tell you more about her next week. I also may be the designated driver, which will be interesting. At least I'm not driving in downtow...

Hey everybody! I hope you all have had a great week! This one was an interesting one for me. We had zone conference this week, combined with a few of the LA zones, and it was sure interesting! It did help us to pick up on a few more of the rules and culture points though. Hopefully things continue to smooth out as we combine more. But most of the LA missionaries seem pretty cool. It should be good to get the chance to work with them pretty soon. Favorite Scripture: Mosiah 16:6-9, especially verse 9. I love how it talks about the Atonement of Jesus Christ in these verses and why it's so important. I think that the comparison to light in verse 9 is really great, because that's exactly what Christ is: an example to each of us. Favorite Miracle: First off, Sister Trujillo and I are convinced that Jason is going to be able to get baptized in a couple of weeks! We had a couple of really good lessons with him this week, and there is just so much light about him. It is ...

Hey everybody! This week was a little weird. We just ended up doing different things than usual, still missionary-work related, but just different. We are working on trying some new finding activities, since knocking hasn't been working lately. Any ideas would be much appreciated! Favorite Miracle: Last Sunday, the young women were combined with the relief society, and one of the young women leaders mentioned a few young women (not present) who were struggling. We decided to reach out to those girls and see if there's anything we can do to help them. There are these twins who live at the top of our area that we'd never met, so we planned to stop by them right after a lesson we had up there, but then the lesson fell through. We're a little low on miles right now, but we decided to still go up there. When we got there, the girls weren't home, but the mom was. She has been renovating her house, pretty much by herself, so she can sell it and move to Virginia. ...

The temple visitor center with the whole Alfarro crew!!  Hey everybody!  Thank you all for your prayers for the people we're teaching! We've seen so many miracles this week because of it.  Favorite Spiritual Things: We had so many cool experiences with our recent converts this week. First off, we got to go to the temple visitors center with the Alfarros again because they wanted to take Jason. It helped him so much! He sent us a really cool text afterwards telling us how much he really means it now. It's really cool to see how much the temple has helped him be more committed.  The next day, we got to do temple baptisms with the older Alfarros and Emilio! That was so cool too. Emilio got to baptize Sister Trujillo, and Brian baptized me. Karla was so sweet afterwards, talking about how she wants to come all the time. I hope they will. They are so excited to get sealed in a year! Emilio spoke in sacrament meeting (again), and President and Sister Hayn...

Hey everybody!   Favorite scripture: This is probably in Isaiah too, but I don't have time to try to find it, haha: 2 Nephi 8:12, and also a few verses after that, but mostly twelve. I liked this because the Lord is trying to help us to know with such confidence who He is. Because if we know who He is and what He's done for us, we have no reason to fear anyone or anything. He is the one that comforts us. Favorite spiritual thing: Brother Alfarro and his oldest son passed the sacrament on Sunday! It was so cool to see. Then, after church, the son went with the other priests to do in-home sacraments and blessed it for the first time too! It's so cool to keep seeing people progress. Favorite funny thing: Sister Trujillo and I had to drive to a meeting in LA this week, and we had to leave pretty early in the morning, when everyone was still driving to work. First off, it took a ridiculously long time to drive about 15 miles, but what was funnier was the cars...

Comp Picture Hey everybody!   This week we became a part of the California Los Angeles Mission! It's pretty exciting. There is a lot of craziness that's happening, but everybody is working hard to make it as smooth as possible. We have a big meeting next week to get a lot of stuff worked out, but it seems very much like President Haynie wants this to be a merge and not a take over. He wants to learn from us, and we want to learn from him. I really hope it works out that way! Since a few people asked, I am still an STL for now, and Sister Trujillo will still be my companion for another 6 weeks. We are no longer required to do KnockOut, but President Haynie purposefully didn't bring up a few big topics when the mission first met him, so we'll see what else we find out about that this week. I like President Haynie so far. He seems to care about us a lot. Sister Haynie is... different for sure, but I'm doing my best to be patient and to unde...